"Give the horses water," ordered an officer. The samurai on horseback passed the order along in loud voices. Another order went out to take a rest. The horsemen dismounted, and the foot soldiers stopped dead in their tracks. Breathing sighs of relief, they dropped wordlessly onto the grass.
Across the river, Kiyosu Castle looked tiny. One of the samurai was Oda Nobuhide’s younger brother, Yosaburo. He sat on a stool, gazing up at the sky, surrounded by half a dozen silent retainers.
Men bound up arm and leg wounds. From the pallor of their faces it was clear they had suffered a great defeat. This did not matter to the children. When they saw blood, they themselves became heroes bathed in blood; when they saw the glitter of spears and pikes, they were convinced that the enemy had been annihilated, and they were filled with pride and excitement.
"Hachiman! Hachiman! Victory!"
When the horses had drunk their fill of water, the children threw flowers at them, too, cheering them on.
A samurai standing beside his horse spotted Hiyoshi and called, "Yaemon's son! How is your mother?"
"Who, me?"
Hiyoshi walked up to the man and looked straight up at him with his grimy face. With a nod, the man put his hand on Hiyoshi's sweaty head. The samurai was no more than twenty years old. Thinking this man had just come from battle, and feeling weight of the hand in its chain-mail gauntlet on his head, Hiyoshi was overwhelmed by a feeling of glory.
Does my family really know such a samurai? he wondered. His friends, who lined up nearby, watching him, could see how proud he was.
"You're Hiyoshi, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"A good name. Yes, a good name."
The young samurai gave Hiyoshi's head a final pat, then struck the waistband of his leather armor and straightened up a bit, studying Hiyoshi's face all the while. Something lade him laugh.
Hiyoshi was quick to make friends, even with adults. To have his head touched by a stranger—and a warrior at that—made his big eyes shine with pride. He quickly became his usual talkative self.
"But you know, nobody calls me Hiyoshi. The only ones who do are my mother and father."
"Because of what you look like, I suppose."
"A monkey?"
"Well, it's good that you know it."
"That's what everyone calls me."
"Ha, ha!" The samurai had a loud voice and a laugh to match. The other men joined the laughter, while Hiyoshi, trying to look bored, took a millet stalk from his jacket and began chewing on it. The grassy-smelling juice in the stalk tasted sweet.
He carelessly spat out the chewed-up stalk.
"How old are you?"
"Six."
"Is that so?"
"Sir, where are you from?"
"I know your mother well."
"Huh?"
"Your mother's younger sister often comes to my house. When you go home, give my regards to your mother. Tell her Kato Danjo wishes her good health."
When the rest break was over, the soldiers and horses got back in line and crossed the shallows of the Shonai River. With a backward glance, Danjo quickly mounted his horse. Wearing his sword and armor, he radiated an air of nobility and power.
"Tell her that when the fighting's over, I'll be stopping by Yaemon's." Danjo gave a yell, spurred his horse, and entered the river's shallows to catch up with the line. White water lapped at his horse's legs.
Hiyoshi, remnants of the millet juice still in his mouth, gazed after him as if in a trance.
* * *
Every trip she made to the storage shed left Hiyoshi's mother sorely depressed. She went there to fetch pickles, grain, or firewood, and was always reminded that supplies often ran out. Thinking of the future brought a lump to her throat. There were only the children, Hiyoshi, six, and his nine-year-old sister, Otsumi—neither, of course, old enough to do any real work. Her husband, wounded in battle, was capable of nothing but sitting by the hearth and staring into the space beneath the hanging teakettle, even in summer when there was no fire.
Those things… I'd feel better if they were burned, she thought.
Leaning against a wall of the shed was a spear with a black oak shaft, above which hung a foot-soldier's helmet and what seemed to be part of an old suit of armor. In the days when her husband had gone off to battle, this equipment had been the best he had. It was now covered with soot and, like her husband, useless. Every time she looked at she felt nothing but disgust. The thought of war made her shudder.
No matter what my husband says, Hiyoshi is not going to become a samurai, she resolved.
At the time of her marriage to Kinoshita Yaemon, she had thought it best to pick samurai for a husband. The house in Gokiso where she was born, while small, was that of a samurai family, and although Yaemon was just a foot soldier, he was a retainer of Oda Nobuhide. When they had become husband and wife, vowing that "in the future, we’ll earn a thousand bushels of rice," the armor had been a symbol of their hopes and had taken precedence over the household goods she had wanted. There was no denying that it brought back happy memories of their marriage. But the contrast between their youthful dreams and the present was not worth a moment's thought. It was a curse eating away at her heart. Her husband had been crippled before he could distinguish himself in battle. Because he was no more than a foot soldier, he had been forced to leave his lord's service. Making a living had been difficult in the first six months, and he had ended up becoming a farmer. Now he was not even capable of that.
Help had come from a woman's hand. Taking the two children with her, Yaemon’s wife had picked mulberry leaves, plowed fields, threshed millet, and warded off poverty all these years. But what of the future? Wondering if the strength of her slender arms would hold out, her heart felt as cold and gloomy as the storage shed. Finally she put the food for the evening meal—millet, a few strips of dried radish—into a bamboo basket and left the storage shed. She was not yet thirty years old, but Hiyoshi's birth had not been an easy one, and ever since, her skin had been the pale color of an unripe peach.
"Mother." It was Hiyoshi's voice. He came around the side of the house, looking for her. His mother laughed softly. She had one bright hope: to bring up Hiyoshi and make him the kind of son and heir who would grow up quickly and be able to present her husband with at least a bit of sake every day. The thought made her feel better.
"Hiyoshi, I'm over here."
Hiyoshi ran toward his mother's voice, then took hold of the arm that held the basket.
"Today, at the riverbank, I met someone who knows you."
"Who?"
"A samurai! Kato something. He said he knew you, and he sent you his regards. He patted my head and asked me questions!"
"Well, that must be Kato Danjo."
"He was with a big group of warriors just coming back from a battle. He was riding a good horse, too! Who is he?"
"Well, Danjo lives near the Komyoji Temple."
"Yes?"
"He is engaged to my little sister."
"Engaged?"
'My, you're persistent!"
'But I don't understand."
'They're going to be married."
"What? You mean he's going to be my mother's little sister's husband?" Hiyoshi seemed satisfied, and laughed.
His mother, when she looked at his toothy, impudent grin, even though he was her own child, could only think of him as a precocious little brat.
“Mother, there's a sword about this big in the storage shed, isn't there?"